During the Second World War (1939–1945), the Nazi authorities rounded up millions of men and women in the occupied countries of Europe and deported them to Germany for forced labor. Thousands of men and women were sent to the districts of Altötting and Mühldorf / Inn. While a number were assigned to agricultural farms, others were assigned to the armaments factories in Gendorf, Kraiburg and Aschau.
The factory work assigned to the mostly young laborers, was both strenuous and dangerous. The provided accommodations as well as food were inadequate. Until 1942, pregnant women were allowed to return to their home countries to give birth.
As the labor shortage in Germany intensified with the war’s progression, SS Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler passed a decree in 1943 stipulating that women were no longer allowed to leave their workplaces during pregnancies. Conforming to this decree, temporary birthing facilities were set up in the factories in Gendorf and Kraiburg by August 1943.
These makeshift facilities in unheated and unhygienic wooden barracks, coupled with the medical equipment made available, did not even comply with the minimum standards of the times. The mothers were forced to return to their workplaces a few days after childbirth, and thus, were unable to fully look after their newborns themselves.
Care facility for the infants of foreign female laborers
In the summer of 1944, a so-called care facility for the infants of foreign female laborers was set up in a barrack in the Gendorf plant. From this time onwards, pregnant women were ordered to this facility for their impending childbirths. Due to lack of food, care, and warmth, the infants born in this facility survived for only a few days or weeks at the most.
After the closure of the children’s care facility on May 2, 1945, a number of children died of neglect. Their remains were buried in different cemeteries nearby. The exact number is not known. Neither the interrogations by the American military government in 1945/1946 nor the later investigations by the Bavarian State Criminal Police Office in 1961 were able to clarify the question of guilt. Those responsible were not found legally guilty, but only morally complicit.
Further reading can be found on the German version of this website.
